چکیده انگلیسی

Drawing upon expectancy value, hope, and self-determination theories, this study explores the contributions of work-based beliefs and autonomy support as predictors of adaptive achievement-related beliefs. Two hundred and one urban high school students who were enrolled in a work-based learning program completed measures of work hope, autonomy support, and achievement beliefs. Results from the full canonical correlation model revealed that work hope, career planning, and autonomy support shared 37.5% of the variance with achievement-related beliefs. Moreover, work hope and teacher autonomy support further contributed unique variance in explaining these beliefs. The findings contribute to the theoretical knowledge base concerning the value of work-based learning in fostering academic motivation among adolescents.

مقدمه انگلیسی

1.1. Participants
Participants consisted of 201 high school students (39.8% male and 60.2% female) in grades nine (33.3%), ten (21.9%), eleven (20.9%), and twelve (23.9%) enrolled in a Catholic high school in a Northeastern city. According to school data, approximately 56% of students report their religious affiliation as Catholic, and 44% of students report a non-Catholic religious affiliation. All students in the school participate in a work-based learning program, which places students in work sites for one day each week across the four years of high school, along with an academically rigorous schedule. Students self-identified race and/or ethnicity were 37.3% Black/African American, 37.3% Hispanic/Latino, 4.5% White, 2.0% Asian/Asian American, 11.9% Other, with 7.0% choosing not to identify their race or ethnicity. Although the vast majority of students (78.6%) reported they were born in the United States, their mothers (59.7%) and fathers (61.2%) were more likely to have been born outside of the United States.
1.2. Measures
1.2.1. Work Hope
We measured work hope using the 24-item Work Hope Scale (WHS) (Juntunen & Wettersten, 2006) and the 20-item Career Planning (CP) scale of the School Form of the Career Development Inventory (CDI) (Super, Thompson, Lindeman, Jordaan & Myers, 1981. We used the CP scale in addition to the WHS because the WHS is a relatively new measure, and the use of the CP would provide an opportunity to assess whether the broad construct of work hope contributes more to the explanation of academic motivation than career planning alone. The WHS measures three components of work hope: goals (e.g., “when I look into the future, I have a clear picture of what my work life will be like”), pathways (e.g., “I have a plan for getting or maintaining a good job or career”), and agency (e.g., “I am confident that things will work out for me in the future”). For this sample, we modified the response options from the original 7-point Likert scale to a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). This modification was made to facilitate student completion of the questionnaire by making the number of response options consistent across measures used in the study. Juntunen and Wettersten (2006) report a Cronbach's α of .93 for the total scale. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed that the WHS would be best used as a single scale rather than as three subscales. For this sample, Cronbach's α was .88 for the total scale. A 2-week, test–retest reliability with a smaller sample produced a Cronbach's α of .90. With regard to validity, Juntunen and Wettersten (2006) found the WHS was positively correlated with career self-efficacy (.62) and vocational identity (.65) for a sample varied in terms of age, education, employment status, and ethnicity.
The CP measures student's career-planning activities (e.g., “I have or am planning to talk about career plans with an adult who knows something about me”) and knowledge about future career (e.g., thinking of the job you might have after schooling, rate the amount of knowledge you have about “different ways of getting into that occupation”). Items were scored on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Super et al. (1981) report a Cronbach's α of .89 for ninth grade students drawn from different regions of the United States. For an ethnically diverse sample of students from the ages of 14–23, Lightfoot and Healy (2001) report a Cronbach's α of .96. The CP has been related to future optimism and an integration of past, present and future goals among college students ( Hernandez and DiClemente, 1992 and Savickas et al., 1984). The sample for the current study yielded a Cronbach's α of .88.
1.2.2. Perceived Autonomy Support
Perceived Autonomy Support was assessed using two scales (Learning Climate and Work Climate) from The Climate Questionnaires (Black and Deci, 2000 and Deci et al., 1989). Perceived Autonomy Support from teachers was assessed using the 6-item version of the Learning Climate Questionnaire (LCQ) and from work supervisors using the 6-item version of the Work Climate Survey (WCS).
For both scales, we again modified the response options from the original 7-point Likert scale to a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) to make consistent the number of response options across the measures used in the study. Higher scores correspond to higher degree of perceived supportive autonomy as opposed to control from teachers and supervisors. Although item stems differed with reference to teacher or supervisor, item content was otherwise identical for the two scales. For the teacher scale, students were asked to consider the teachers at their school, and, for the supervisor scale, students were asked to respond in reference to their primary supervisor at their Work Study site. Item examples include “My supervisor [my teachers] listens to how I would like to do things,” and “I feel my teachers [supervisor] provide[s] me with choices and options”. Reported internal consistency reliability for the Climate Questionnaires was .92 for a study of patients' reports of health care providers (Williams, Grow, Freedman, Ryan & Deci, 1996) and .96 for a study of medical students' descriptions of their medical professors (Williams & Deci, 1996).The Cronbach's α with the current sample was .84 for perceived teacher autonomy support and .91 for the supervisor autonomy support. The Climate Questionnaires have been related to needs satisfaction variables (Baard, Deci & Ryan, 2004).
1.2.3. Achievement-Related Beliefs
Three scales from the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS) (Midgley, Maehr, Hruda, Anderman, Anderman, Freeman et al., 2000) were used to assess achievement-related beliefs. Skepticism about the relevance of school for future success measures students' self-reported doubt about the connection of school and future accomplishments (e.g., “even if I do well in school, it will not help me have the kind of life I want when I grow up”). The scale consists of 6 items scored on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (not true at all) to 5 (very true). Higher scores on this scale indicated higher skepticism about the future, while lower scores indicate less skepticism. The Cronbach's α reported in the initial validation of this scale was .83 (Midgley et al., 2000). For this sample, the Cronbach's α was .82.
The second PALS scale was mastery goal orientation (revised), which measures students' self-reported interest and task orientation as a motive for engaging in academic behavior (e.g., “one of my goals is to master a lot of skills this year”). The 5-item scale is scored on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (not true at all) to 5 (very true). Higher scores indicate higher goal mastery, while lower scores indicate less goal mastery. The Cronbach's α reported in the initial validation of this scale was .85 (Midgley et al., 2000). For this sample, the Cronbach's α was .81.
The third PALS scale was academic efficacy which measures students' perception of their academic competence and expectations for learning (e.g., “I'm certain I can master the skills taught in class this year”). This 5-item scale is also scored on a Likert-type scale from 1 (not true at all) to 5 (very true). Higher scores on this scale indicate higher levels of academic self-confidence, while lower scores indicated less academic self-confidence. The Cronbach's α reported in the initial validation of this scale was .78 (Midgley et al., 2000). For this sample the Cronbach's α was .74.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

Drawing upon expectancy value theory (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), hope theory (Snyder, 2000), and self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), the findings of this study contribute to a multi-faceted theoretical understanding of the motivational processes that link career development constructs and school achievement-related beliefs. Consistent with expectancy value theory, the full canonical correlation model confirms the expected relationship between positive, hopeful and planful views towards one's vocational future and a valuing of current educational experiences and feelings of competence in those activities. With regard to hope theory, work hope evidenced a robust relationship with achievement-related beliefs and learning environments characterized by support and autonomy. The contribution of career planning to achievement beliefs is also consistent with hope theory, as the pathways dimension of hope relates to planfulness. According to self-determination theory, the environmental characteristics of autonomy and support are expected to be facilitative of motivation, with the results of the full model in this study showing the expected positive relationship between autonomy support and a range of achievement beliefs.
Subsequent analyses provide a more detailed understanding of the pattern of relationships. Partial analyses reveal, for example, that work hope and teacher autonomy support were the most powerful predictors of achievement-related beliefs, contributing unique variance to the model. That is, after accounting for the effects of work hope and teacher autonomy support, career planning and supervisor autonomy support did not add significant variance. Because the construct of work hope encompasses planfulness as one of its components and is reflected in the measure, this finding is not surprising. Our findings suggest that the measure of work hope offers unique explanatory power in understanding achievement-related beliefs beyond the contribution of career planfulness alone. Work hope is a relatively new construct and measure (Juntunen & Wettersten, 2006), with limited examination in education or career literature. The robust nature of the observed relationship between work hope and achievement beliefs points to the heuristic and explanatory potential of this construct in further research examining educational and career development processes. Consistent with the position set forth by Juntunen and Wettersten (2006), work hope appears to be a meaningful construct in understanding the school motivation of low-income youth of color, whose hopes for the future are challenged by a variety of economic and social barriers (Constantine et al., 1998 and Ogbu, 1989). Participation in a work-based learning program, as was the case for the students in this study, may have contributed to the salience of work hope as a predictor of adaptive achievement beliefs. Work-based learning and work hope deserve further investigation as antidotes to the academic disinterest and discouragement sometimes experienced by youth in low resource environments (Fine et al., 2004, Mickelson, 1990 and Ogbu, 1989).
Teacher autonomy support emerged as a strong and unique predictor of achievement-related beliefs. Given that motivational beliefs were related to the academic context, the role of the teacher as a unique contributor to academic motivation makes sense. This finding is consistent not only with self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), but also with the substantive literature documenting the importance of teacher support for school engagement and academic achievement (Kenny and Bledsoe, 2005, Wentzel, 1997 and Wentzel, 2002). The presence of a supportive caring school environment has been identified as one factor explaining higher levels of academic achievement of low-income students of color attending Catholic schools than those attending public schools (Bempechat, Boulay, Piergross and Wenk, 2008). The current findings add to the teacher support literature by explicating, consistent with self-determination theory, the role of autonomy facilitation or choice as a dimension of teacher support. As with early adolescents (Eccles & Midgley, 1989), a combination of teacher support and autonomy appears to offer a good fit in fostering the positive achievement beliefs among urban high school students. Although the relationship with the work supervisor is a central component of the adolescent work experience (Zimmer-Gembeck & Mortimer, 2006), supervisor autonomy support did not emerge as a strong or unique predictor of achievement-related beliefs in this study. It appears that the supervisor relationship has limited carry over to student beliefs about school achievement. Although the reasons for this are not clear, the work supervisor typically spends less time with the student than the teacher, and occupies a role that is less salient to performance in the academic classroom. The observed correlations between supervisor autonomy support and work hope and career planning suggest that the supervisor relationship may more directly relate to hope and planfulness about one's vocational future.
For the full model, all three dimensions of achievement beliefs (academic efficacy, mastery goal, and skepticism about school) were related to work hope and autonomy/support. Step-down analyses indicate that work hope as a unique predictor contributes significantly to all three achievement beliefs and that teacher autonomy supports contributes significantly to academic efficacy and skepticism about school. The contribution of work hope to all three dimensions is illuminating. That is, having hope regarding one's vocational future appears to have benefits not only because students understand the relevance of school to their futures, but because students also express a desire to gain academic competence and believe that they are capable of doing so. Work hope is valuable, therefore, not only for its association with students' awareness of and desire to attain external rewards through future career attainment, but also because it is related to confidence in learning and the desire to attain academic competence. This is desirable because students who express competence and intrinsic interest in gaining competence have been found to exhibit greater persistence when confronted with challenges than students motivated only by external rewards (Hofer, 2002). Both expectancy value (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000) and self-determination (Ryan & Deci, 2000) theories emphasize the importance of intrinsic interest, beyond the lure of external rewards, in fostering effort and motivation.
Teacher autonomy support contributed unique variance to academic efficacy and skepticism about school. Although we expected that teacher autonomy support would contribute to students' perceptions of their academic competence and their understanding of the relevance of school, it is not clear why teachers would not also contribute to an intrinsic interest in learning and in developing competence. Research suggests, however, that student enjoyment of learning and concern about developing competence are promoted by teacher goals and classroom structure that focus on these outcomes, rather than emphasizing student grades or getting the correct answers. Teacher autonomy support may be insufficient in order for students to value learning and the acquisition of competence (Midgley et al., 2000).
Overall the findings have implications for the development of educational and career programs supporting positive youth development for urban school populations. Interventions that enable youth to establish goals, develop clear plans or pathways for attaining those goals, and gain confidence and competence for achieving those goals are likely to be beneficial and related to positive achievement-related beliefs. Work-based learning may be one such program. Fostering a positive future orientation has been recognized in prior research as an important component of effective intervention and prevention programs for youth (Catalano et al., 2004 and Gillham et al., 2002). Within the school context, teachers who provide support coupled with opportunities for student choice and decision-making are also likely to foster positive academic motivation. Given the existing literature on career development education, the findings suggest that integrative programs that build on teacher support may be useful for students, particularly those in work-based learning. Whereas prior research suggested that teacher support is an important component of the learning environment provided by successful Catholic High Schools (Bempechat, Boulay, Piergross and Wenk, 2008), the current study suggests that promoting work hope also contributes to adaptive achievement-related beliefs in that context.
Despite the strength of the findings in furthering understanding of theoretical constructs associated with future orientation and academic motivation, they must be considered in light of study limitations. Although we propose that work-based learning may be one type of intervention that promotes work hope and positive academic motivational beliefs, this study did not assess the effects of work-based learning. In fact, all students were participants in a work-based learning program in a Catholic school context, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. All of the findings are based on self-report measures, so are thus limited by students' self-awareness and social desirability. The extent to which any of the study variables will contribute to increased academic achievement in the present or the future is unknown. The relationship among the study variables is correlational so that causality cannot be assumed.
The limitations of the current study suggest directions for further research. Longitudinal research that directly assesses the impact of work-based learning and the role of work hope and achievement-related beliefs as mediators of academic outcomes is needed to further assess the relationships proposed in this article. In addition to academic indicators, such as grades, school persistence, and post high school education, reports of student progress from teachers and from work supervisors would add validity and would further extend understanding of the outcomes of work-based learning and the mechanisms that explain those outcomes.